The first hour of the debate, co-hosted by WABC-TV, aired on broadcast television and may have been the biggest stage yet for the mayoral candidates, though the station pre-empted the second hour with a game show, “Press Your Luck,” forcing viewers to switch to another channel or an online stream.
After months of staid online forums, the debate on Wednesday took on the trappings of a prize fight, with fans of the candidates holding rallies outside the Upper West Side television studio, waving signs, blaring music and mixing with the contenders.
Inside, several of the candidates appeared eager for confrontation.
“As your consultants have told you time and time again, they admit you are an empty vessel,” Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, said to Mr. Yang, peering over his podium to address the former presidential candidate directly. “I actually don’t think you are an empty vessel. I think you are a Republican who continues to focus on the issues that will not bring back the economy.”
Mr. Stringer, who is casting himself as a progressive with deep government experience, ripped Maya Wiley, claiming she had been a “rubber stamp” for the Police Benevolent Association when she chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board. And he suggested that Mr. Adams and others believe “the only solution to preventing crime is going back to the Giuliani days with stop-and-frisk and a Republican agenda that put a lot of kids in our criminal justice system.”
Ms. Wiley, who defended her tenure, slammed Mr. Yang’s record leading Venture for America, the nonprofit he ran before running for president, over its record of job creation and how, records show, he failed to recruit many participants of color. And in one of the most revealing exchanges of the night, she and Mr. Adams had an extended back-and-forth over remarks he made about guns.
“Mr. Adams has said he’s carried a gun to church, he has asked off-duty officers to carry guns to church, he’s said he will carry a gun as mayor,” Ms. Wiley said. “Eric, isn’t this the wrong message to send our kids we’re telling not to pick up the guns?”
Mr. Adams stressed that he saw a distinction between off-duty officers carrying guns and the proliferation of illegal guns, describing a scenario — it was unclear if it was hypothetical — where an off-duty police officer could stop an anti-Asian hate crime on the subway.